On March 25, 2026, BC Hydro crews restored electricity to roughly 1,400 customers on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, following a windstorm that had knocked out power to more than 1,600 customers near Ganges the previous day.
While many homes were without power for most of the day, Lady Minto Gulf Islands Hospital was able to maintain services through its 24/7 emergency department, which recently finished a $14-million expansion. This incident follows a larger outage on March 11, 2026, when falling trees left about 2,400 customers in the dark across three different areas of the island.
The utility is currently working to improve service reliability by installing an 11-kilometre underwater power cable between Salt Spring and North Pender Islands. This project is expected to be finished by September 2026 to help prevent the kind of long-term outages seen during the historic December 20, 2018 windstorm, which left some residents without power for eight days.
During the recent outages, drivers were reminded to treat intersections as four-way stops, especially since the island relies on flashing lights and stop signs rather than traditional traffic signals. The Salt Spring Island Emergency Program also remains in place to help residents manage the first 72 hours of any local emergency or natural disaster.
